Does the way you throw dice in craps change the outcome?
November 4, 2015 1:38 PM   Subscribe

At the casino table game of Craps, does the way you throw matter? If you blow on the dice, shake them, throw different than the other previous shooter, or emulate the lucky shooter, will the outcome of winning or losing change? or is this a simple un-measurable superstition related to "things that make a shooter 7-out"?
posted by brent to Grab Bag (10 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
The whole point of fair dice is that these thing don't matter. I suppose if you're good at some sleight of hand thing and can make dice land in a way you want them to a slightly higher percentage of the time, it would make a difference. If the dice are not fair (the sides are not weighted evenly), obviously that matters. But style and blowing and shaking and stuff have no effect on the odds of the roll.
posted by brainmouse at 1:41 PM on November 4, 2015


Unless you're actually cheating, it really doesn't matter. It can be either fun or dangerous (or both) to believe it does, and people may succumb to confirmation bias (if they do one of these things, they'll notice when things go right for them and discount when things don't go well), but people who say these help you win are wrong.

It might be true that if you, for example, roll the dice further they will roll for a longer amount of time and it might change which numbers come up, but it will change them to different random numbers and will not help you secure a more advantageous outcome. Unless you are actually cheating, the numbers you roll will be random no matter what you do because this is how dice games are designed to work.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 1:44 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Dice Control
posted by kookywon at 1:49 PM on November 4, 2015 [7 favorites]


People with a lot of practise can manipulate the outcome of a dice roll on fair dice in a manner that looks like a convincingly random dice roll to an observer. The controls that the casino sets (rolling with one hand and bouncing it off the back wall) are specifically designed to make any significant level of control impossible.

I have never heard of anyone actually being able to demonstrate a statistically significant deviation from randomness under these conditions. All this is not to say that it's impossible but, if it is possible, it is going to be an extraordinarily difficult skill involving countless hours of practise, so much so that the theoretical practitioners are so few that they have managed to keep it a secret (and secrets like this are VERY hard to keep).

The superstitious behaviour you see at the tables, specifically the ones you describe, are far too simple to meet this definition. The only way they are likely to affect the odds are if they are using this ritual as a sleight of hand opportunity to switch fair dice out for lookalike loaded ones (which does happen).
posted by 256 at 2:12 PM on November 4, 2015 [3 favorites]


There was an article in Harper's a few years ago where the writer attended a dice control school, and spent some time discussing the various methods of doing so. But, based on the author'so observations, it didn't seem like there was any noticeable effect beyond a Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon.
posted by LionIndex at 2:23 PM on November 4, 2015


Of course it's just a superstition. Betting against the roller also has zero effect on the outcome. Also drawing "someone else's card" at a Blackjack table is nonsense. But the drunk guy to your right might still bitch at you if you ask to hit your 16 against a dealer 10 and take "his" Jack, and you might get a lot of stink-eye at a craps table for "betting wrong".
posted by Nelson at 2:27 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


Few gamblers are as superstitious as craps players. I once brought the entire half of a table to a hush when I jokingly called a roll because a friend took down his bet on that number.

"What made you say that?!?"

And then they started mimicking my bets and we all lost big. Because I called one roll.

The little foam pyramids on the back wall (that you have to hit or else they might invalidate the roll) pretty much ensure a random outcome.
posted by hwyengr at 2:54 PM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


I have heard dice control compared to expert dart throwing. I believe it is demonstrable on a flat surface without the foam pyramids. The most easily understood method I know of is to place the dice together side by side, and then throw them like a rolling log. The idea is that the spinning will cause the dice to be less likely to rotate on another axis, and thus the two numbers on the inside of the dice stack (the two that are touching each other when you stack the dice) and on the outside (opposite those two inside numbers) are less likely to appear. However, as hwyengr points out, the foam pyramids pretty much cause a random bounce, and casinos can require that you re-roll if the dice don't touch the pyramids. Dice control practitioners claim that the proper method is to roll the dice in the manner described, and have them gently come to rest lightly touching the pyramids.
posted by RobotNinja at 4:38 PM on November 4, 2015


Follow the money.

If there were any way to control the roll of the dice, the casinos would have noticed long ago and done something to prevent it.

Compare, for instance, how they handled the card-counters in Blackjack. That actually worked, and the casinos lost a lot of money before they changed how BJ is handled: many decks, auto-shuffled and placed in a shoe, and the shoe gets reloaded when there are about 25% of the cards are left.

No one makes money card-counting any more.

Actually, there are ways of cheating. The best is to modify the dice to have an offset weight inside. So you modify a pair of dice and use sleight-of-hand to swap your fixed dice with the ones the house gives you.

Except... the house figured that one out a long time ago. That's why the dice are clear plastic, so the table boss can tell if the dice have been modified.

The reason the house doesn't care about people blowing on the dice, or any of the other weird things craps players do, is because they know it doesn't make any difference.

There's a way of "rolling" the dice which does give you a chance of controlling the outcome. But it doesn't work if the dice bounce off a wall of the craps table -- and that's why the table boss requires a roll to bounce off the wall of the craps table. Any roll which doesn't is null-and-void. Any player who refuses to bounce the dice off the wall of the craps table on roll after roll will be politely shown to the door.

There's only one thing that certain in a casino: the casino will make money.

The only game in a casino where a skilled player can consistently win is poker, because he isn't playing against the house. He's playing against other players, hopefully who are not as skilled as he is.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:37 PM on November 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


The only game in a casino where a skilled player can consistently win is poker, because he isn't playing against the house. He's playing against other players, hopefully who are not as skilled as he is.

A little off-topic, but blackjack is still an edge case. Depending on the payout/shuffle structure, card counting can still give you an edge in many casinos with perfect play.
posted by 256 at 6:06 AM on November 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


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